Speaker says vibrant, livable downtown is an ‘economic imperative for cities’

It’s been probably a decade since consultant Brad Segal was last in downtown Wichita.

Two hours after landing in Wichita on Tuesday, the president of Denver-based Progressive Urban Management Associates said that in the short time he had to look around, he saw some positive changes.

There are many more people living downtown, said Segal, who was a consultant to establishing a downtown Self-Supporting Municipal Improvement District in Wichita in the late 1990s. Intrust Bank Arena wasn’t built when he was here last. And some one-way streets downtown have been converted to two-way streets, such as St. Francis.

Segal, who’s made a career studying and consulting downtowns for 30 years, will speak on his firm’s research about global trends affecting downtowns and how that relates to Wichita’s downtown redevelopment efforts. He will speak at a free public presentation at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Lux, 120 E. First St.

He is the final presenter in the Fuel the Fire speaker series, which is funded through a grant from the Knight Foundation and support from the Wichita Community Foundation, Wichita Downtown Development Corp. and the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Council.

Segal said that since acting as a consultant here in the late 1990s, he has been to the city on other occasions visiting family.

“The bottom line is … we’re at a point where so many market forces are converging to benefit downtowns,” Segal said Tuesday.

Those market forces include changing demographics such as baby boomers retiring, generation Xers moving into leadership and decision-making roles, and millennials wanting to live, work and play in an urban setting.

Downtowns are key “to attracting young, skilled talent” to a city, he said. Vibrant, livable downtowns are an “economic imperative for cities,” Segal said, not just for millennials, but other generations and income levels.

Downtowns not only need to have places for people to live, but also the amenities to support them living downtown, he said.

Downtowns used to be places “designed to get cars in and out of quickly,” Segal said. “Suddenly, people want to live here, be down here. We need to accommodate these other ways of living because that’s where the future is.”

This story was originally published October 28, 2014 at 6:25 PM with the headline "Speaker says vibrant, livable downtown is an ‘economic imperative for cities’."